Café Shapiro Shapiro Undergraduate Library
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17th Annual Café Shapiro Shapiro Undergraduate Library February 10, 2014 February 11, 2014 February 12, 2014 February 17, 2014 Anthology of Selected Poems & Short Stories Café Shapiro 2014 Anthology ©2014 The authors retain all copyright interests in their respective works. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Please contact [email protected] for permission information. Original Artwork provided by: Margaret Hitch University of Michigan Major: Art and Design Printed on the University of Michigan Library’s Espresso Book Machine Introduction Introduction Café Shapiro Welcome to Café Shapiro! Café Shapiro began in February 1998 as part of the University’s “Year of the Humanities and Arts” (YoHA). Originally conceived as a student coffee break. Café Shapiro takes place in the Sha- piro Undergraduate Library during winter evenings in February. It features undergraduate student writers nominated by their professors, many of whom have also been nominated for various writing prizes within the University and beyond. Students are invited to perform a live reading for a peer audience. For many student writers, Café Shapiro is a first opportunity to read publicly from their work. For others, it provides a fresh audience, and the ability to experience the work of students they may not encounter in writing classes. Through its seventeen years of existence, Café Shapiro has evolved to become several nights of sharing among some of our best undergraduate writers, their friends, families, and the wider community. Café Shapiro has been popular, and in many years we have created an anthology to provide access to these students’ works after the live perfor- mance. We are delighted that this year’s anthology could be printed, once again, on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). The University of Michigan acquired the EBM in order to help our users connect with content in the ways most useful to them, thereby supporting the research and learning needs of students, scholars and faculty. For more information about the EBM, visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/espresso-book -machine. It is exciting to see our mission being realized in this year’s printing of the 17th Annual Café Shapiro Anthology. We hope you enjoy reading the work of these talented writers. The University of Michigan Libraries Shapiro Undergraduate Library Learning and Teaching Ann Arbor, Michigan March 2014 3 Café Shapiro 2014 Anthology Contents Yasin Abdul-Muqit The Moon is No Door 8 Whatever moves within me 9 Jennifer’s Piece 9 The Elegy of Spring 10 You know that blue house on Evelyn? We’ll die there 11 Jill Abrell The American Experience 12 Untitled 15 Miranda Ajulufoh Inauthentic 17 Corinne Albrecht I Counted Every Single One And I Should Have Known One Would Be The Final 23 The Depression Dictionary 24 Cara Anderson Science 27 The Winter Blues 28 Justin Anderson He Told It to the Mitten on a Stick 30 Vivian Anderson 206 Bones 37 Rishee Batra Icarus’s Friend 52 Wet Wings 53 Switches 53 Silver Manifesto 54 Freida Blostein Dawn Farm OR 55 I Want Him Better, I Just Don’t Want Him Here 55 Julia Byers The End 59 Madeline Chais A Microcosm of Madness 63 The Irony Party (2006) 65 4 Contents Kelly Christensen Paperweight 69 Audrey Coble Around the Time of Benito Mussolini’s Death 73 Leela Denver Botanical 75 When the Water Boils 76 Sarah Dittrich A Letter to a Nice Boy 77 Carlina Duan uptake 80 a kiss 82 Allison Epstein Lost and Found 85 Cameron Finch Love Drunk 90 Elis Fisk This Is What Really Happened. – A confession by Tyler Vance 97 Noah Gordon Deadline 108 Sierra Hansen Time: This is a layover 115 Adam Hart High Tide 120 The 100+ Year Chicago Enigma (and still counting) 121 Chicago’s St. Louis Blues 122 The Maker and the Made 123 To know you still love me 124 Jeannette Hinkle No Worries Mate 126 Margaret Hitch A Collection of Maps 131 Lowland 132 Regarding Your Tweet This Morning 133 Bad Girls 134 5 Café Shapiro 2014 Anthology Erin Hull Crossroads 136 Caitie John New York, I Love You 142 Bennet Johnson Huron with Gabe 147 Huron with Chris 148 Quellies 149 Room Ten-O-Nine 151 Ariel Kaplowitz Night in Paris 155 Aging 156 world on fire 157 Sarah Kimmel A New Kind of Horror 159 Nadia Langworthy Diving in with the Unoffended Kiwi 168 Daphne Li My Grandfather and His Country 180 Pareesa Memon Karachi Slums 185 Jamie Monville Treasure Hunt 197 Sena Moon Summer of Love 205 Sydney Morgan-Green Forest of Darkness 212 Emily Morley After 216 Théo Münch (Home) 224 Une Lettre de Mamy 225 Memory 225 Murmur 226 6 Contents Jake Offenhartz Moonlight 228 Nikki Page The University of Michigan’s Only Aspiring Waitress 231 Amanda Peters $1.75 238 Vanitas 239 Julianne Potter The Maid of Orleans 242 Allison Punch The Rise and Fall of the C.A.M. Agency 246 Ben Simko Strip Mall 251 Karinne Smolenyak The Exposition 254 John Tobin Eulogy 261 Crossing the Street 262 Adam’s Rib 263 To My Left 263 Open Mind 264 Claire Van Winkle Leaving Aotearoa 266 Dominic Vetuschi Michael Cali 274 Marissa Wais to my familiar: 278 printed on the fire hydrant 279 north : ghazal 280 Xue Zhang Mich and Ohi 281 7 Café Shapiro 2014 Anthology Yasin Abdul-Muqit Junior Major: English The Moon is No Door The moon is no door to the past— I stare at it and see memories before me like a mirror that crosses an eternal distance— Only a step away from a final half-birthday, to a dusk— When all of hell is ready to let loose from the heavens, from my mother’s eyes, from the annals of her squid chambered heart— For a short time when I was waiting for the world to unend— Doubts still saturate my tongue as biting as an apple’s mantle yet remains like a bitter core’s shell— A final sweetness that all else tastes grey and rubber bland, yet, still so redolent— It sits in the air, heavy as sun stanked salmon depreciates all these years. It whispers— The moon is no door to life again. 8 Yasin Abdul-Muqit Whatever moves within me Whatever moves within me strangles like a castle besieged, Kills like sharks in bloodied waters. It erases my face like a text message clicks, A fir- ing squad on wasted identities. Whatever moves inside me pries like a mother’s memory. It struggles with fate, pathetic as a pauper’s plea. It falls to its knees, bellows, Cries searching for perfect hearts. Whatever beats inside me, throttles like a father’s angry. An innocence that flutters by and dies soft like butterfly wings. Jennifer’s Piece She plays! Listen to her resilient fingers slip over the itching ivories loose like the wet limbs of a spider escaping its stay in the drink. Immaculately, she masters the malady that lures her to the trap. She plunges in, graceful as a starling that dives from the bridge’s edge, touching briefly the burgundy secrets of the symphony that beckons her. She roars for the heavens that croon her name, unscathed by the ruinous bourbon below or the breath of the broiling sun. She sways us tall like Arachne’s vision reflects from her murmuring heart and drips in perfect secession, to us, her honest piano. Who tells her to play on? She takes us lost within the livid world she endeavors to make exist away from the rule that weaves around her. We’re pulled into the threads, the holy marionettes, sole saviors of our spirit that blind us to injury, beyond 9 Café Shapiro 2014 Anthology the imaginings of thought. We’re flown into freedom until we wonder if she even feels the keys on her fingertips or notices that we’re here listening. We’re hers now, wrapped snugly in the web she has created. We don’t belong to the instruments we play. The Elegy of Spring Someday some meticulous hand will pull my roots from beneath me— —I am a weed. The garden will be better for it. My gardener, he hates me, rips my limbs that feel warm of sunlight and leaves me to suffer, half alive. Who has ever seen a happy weed In beds with sweet flowers? If only I could dig myself up, run freely from the murder gardens, sow myself somewhere warm, save myself from the eruption of Spring, the deathyards, now pointless timber. If I could climb with the ivies over trellis gates, float with the water lilies on peace, where I have the ability to be able to just be let to live. I’m buried in this isolation, smothered to life and jealous like the moon on fire. If I had meticulous hands, could I be reborn as a song of paradise? Could I break free from this ground and bloom like a bird for the sun? 10 Yasin Abdul-Muqit You know that blue house on Evelyn? We’ll die there We used to live across from each other and skip school to jump kids or play foursquare on Mr. Hendrick’s backyard patio. Sometimes we met in the middle to eat his prized grapes until he came home. He was never there until late in the day, we treated it like a some kind of paradise, some kind of sanctuary, we’d stay there for the longest time, hide the bikes we stole behind his garden shed and tell the police we had no idea.